


Varric Is A Liar.

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Blood Magic, Dwarf/Human Relations, F/M, Minor Character Death, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:03:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric's hidden the true nature of Dorian Hawke from the Seeker, and Dorian herself can't be found. That leaves only one who knows the nature of the relationship between the storyteller and the heroine.<br/>A story told in vignettes, not necessarily in chronological order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue.

From beginning to end, he'd lied to the Seeker.  
For example, he and Bianca hadn't rescued the coinpurse from the cutpurse at all -- Dorian Hawke had done it herself, and not with magic, but with almost-supernatural speed and a well-wielded fist. He'd approached her in admiration, and only mentioned Bartrand's expedition as an afterthought, the hare-brained investment idea coming to him with feverish swiftness as he sought a reason to keep her attentions.

Or, another example -- he'd been much too dumbfounded to curse Bartrand when he'd stranded them in the Deep Roads. Dorian had cut loose with language that would have impressed even the most crass of dwarves, raising the eyebrows of everyone in attendance.  
"Uh. Didn't mean to say that about your mother," she mumbled awkwardly in reference to one particularly-colourful phrase, later. He'd forgiven her with no small amount of amusement.

But those were small omissions, to be expected. He didn't like talking about himself, but he did like talking about himself in relation to Hawke -- not Dorian, but 'Hawke', the Champion, the infamous apostate, the legend. He'd known Hawke, he'd _aided_ Hawke, and that made him strangely proud.

Dorian, however... Dorian was someone of whom he was fiercely protective, even if she now only existed in his faulty memory.

"My, my. Don't tell me you're developing a crush," he teased Cassandra Pentaghast at some point deep in his telling.  
His mouth laughed. His eyes didn't.

\--

_From beginning to end, he lied to the Seeker, the same way he'd lied to even his own journals -- just in case they were found (and they were, just as he'd thought they'd be)._

_But they never found me, and he knew they wouldn't. I've escaped the Qunari, more than once -- a few Chantry lackeys don't frighten me. To me he entrusted his tales, and I've kept them this long, but it's time to let them be told._

_You know who I am. And you know I_ always _tell it like it is._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More than blooming roses or trouser greatswords, give us truth.  
> [ chapter rating: Explicit ]

She was rough with everyone but him.

He watched avidly as she stared down the Arishok, unbent, unbowed. He coughed behind his hand to hide his laughter when she made Javaris Tintop shake in his boots, or when that fool Anso nearly pissed himself at the sound of her voice. Neither Ketojan nor Arvaarad presented any challenge to her, and when darkspawn growled she growled back without reservation -- before taking off their heads.

When they went to meet Danarius for the first and last time, Isabela quipped, "Five sovereigns on that old magister bending the knee to Dorian instead," and for once, Varric had no answering wager.

But those hands that caused such destruction were gentle on his flesh, and her dagger-sharp tongue softened against his, and she regarded him with almost-drowsy eyes that held no glitter unless it was the sheen of mirth. They made love slowly, sensually, just the way he'd dreamt it when he was younger and more foolish.  
She was soft for him, the way so many men wished they could have her. But there was something missing in that, some small bit of... _honesty._

And then they had a row.

\--

 _She doesn't understand,_ Varric tells himself as he stares with a detached thoughtfulness at the door through which Dorian had just departed in a blaze of frustrated fury. _Everyone else shits themselves in her presence, but Meredith won't. Meredith would kill her._

All Varric had tried to do was warn her, get her to think twice about her involvement in this mage underground, about her involvement with that lunatic, Anders. For his efforts, he'd gotten uncommonly harsh words and a slammed door, the estate echoing with the sudden silence.  
One just didn't tell Dorian Hawke what to do without paying dearly for one's presumption.

He sighs heavily, turning to face the great room, feeling lost in her estate without her there. He didn't spend as much time in the sprawling mansion as he'd have liked, mostly because he didn't want to annoy Dorian, but also because he didn't want to get used to it. The fear of domestic stability ran deep in him.  
Bodahn emerges from an adjoining room and casts him a sympathetic, questioning look, but Varric just shakes his head and heads up the stairs.

Dorian's room smells of her mabari and her exhaustion, but when Varric strips off his outer garments and hops onto the four-poster, he can smell _her_ \-- sweat and lyrium and a hint of embrium, and tears too, because contrary to what she made everyone believe about her, Dorian cried more often and more bitterly than anyone.  
He sinks into the neatly-made bed, flat on his back with his head turned into the pillow. _Just a while. Then I'll go out and see if I can't find her, wherever she's gone. Probably the Hanged Man. Hope Izzy's there, at least..._

He jerks awake when the door thuds shut behind a surprised and rather drunk Dorian.

Struggling to sit up, he stammers out some sort of half-coherent explanation or apology or... _something,_ but there's a feverish brightness to her eyes and a feverish eagerness to the way she disrobes, and his words still on his tongue as she stalks towards the bed, the last of her garments falling to the carpet.  
She mounts the bed, and him, with little grace. Her unsteady hands fumble with his long undershirt, and she breathes warm, beery breath into his face, but the insides of her thighs are hot against the outsides of his and her breasts swell full and heavy when she inhales--

"You're drunk," he says with no small amount of amazement, trying to catch hold of her wrists. She drank copiously, like a true Kirkwaller, but she'd never seemed to get anywhere past comfortably intoxicated before...   
She wrenches out of his grasp and pushes his arms away. He lets them fall to the bed, splayed on either side of him.  
"Dorian--" he tries to protest one more time, and she reaches down, takes his stirring organ in hand, and squeezes. He chokes on a gasp.

"Shut up," she mumbles, lips quirking in a quick flash of a grin as frank shock and dumb lust war for prominence on his face. Even his internal monologue is stunned into silence.  
"Shut up," she repeats, and the slurring doesn't diminish the throaty, almost slutty quality of her voice.

Varric shuts up. And when she clamps her hands down on his shoulders to steady herself and angles her hips, he is harder than the Stone. 

She doesn't ease him in like usual, but slams down hard, muscles tightening around him immediately. He shuts his eyes tight and hisses, body drawing up like a tense bow string, flushing from head to toe, but before he can recover she is grinding against him with an abandon he's only wished for, her fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.

It is a sloppy operation -- no preamble, no seduction, just her overeager hands and ale breath and erratic rhythm, and he is pinned and can't touch her, and his senses are overloaded and he can't stop himself from coming much too early for his liking, but he thinks it may have been the most honest she's ever been.

She falls asleep with a leg splayed over both of his and her face mashed into the pillow, auburn hair haphazard and tangled, and best of all, she doesn't apologise for any of it in the morning.

\--

 _You know, I love sex. I mean, I don't need to tell you that, do I? But storybook sex is so_ boring. _Everyone smells like Antivan spices -- ever notice that it's_ always _Antivan? -- and everyone takes it all slow and steady, and everyone comes precisely when they're meant to and not a moment earlier -- ha!_ that's _a laugh..._

 _And honestly? That's not the kind of sex I love.  
Let it be dirty, let it be sweaty, let it be desperate -- let it be whatever it is. Most of all, unless one of you didn't want it,_ never _apologise for it._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The two struggle to make sense of tragedy after 'All That Remains'.  
> [ chapter rating: Teen and Up ]

What made it worse was that he'd brought flowers for Dorian that day, too.  
But while Bodahn arranged the big white lilies on the mantle, Dorian inspected the blooms of harlot's blush with a critical eye. "Seems like a mature enough bloom. Think he'll be happy with this?"

"If you ask me, ol' Solivitus is just happy to see your face most days," Varric replied, eyes dancing merrily, and she frowned disapprovingly at him before moving to the kitchen to fill an empty potion bottle with water.  
"Where'd your dear mum get off to?"

"You'll have to ask Bodahn. I was asleep until your early-to-rise ass came 'round."

They'd planned on enjoying the remarkably slow day, planned on lounging about in houseclothes until night fell and then going down to the Hanged Man, but before night fell, Dorian was taking up her staff. And Varric and Bianca were right behind her.

"I thought it was bad when Thrask was after her," Dorian groused as they followed a muttering Gamlen into Lowtown.

By the end of the night, she'd have given the templar her personal blessing to court lonely, too-trusting Leandra Hawke, as long as he'd never leave her home alone.

\--

Varric's hands tremble as he absently rubs his temples, his unwashed and unfettered hair tumbling into his face. "I don't understand," he repeats, blankly, and Bodahn sighs sympathetically before moving to get him a refill. The wine is good, a piquant red, but Varric barely tastes it, quaffing it like ale.

He keeps shifting in his seat as if he's about to get up, go up the stairs, but the heaviness in his heart is also the heaviness in his limbs, and he can't push himself out of the chair. He hopes Dorian is sleeping, although he's sure that if _he_ can't rest, she most certainly couldn't be inclined to do so, either.

"She said she didn't like me," he murmurs, with a brittle little laugh. "But she always made sure a place was set for me." He smooths his hand over the table, seeing her watching from the doorway as Dorian snorts into her shepherd's pie at some joke of Varric's, seeing her shake her head in prim disapproval whilst her hand discreetly covers the smirk she couldn't stop from forming.

"Messere Varric," Bodahn says quietly, resting a hand on the dwarf's hunched shoulder. He always insisted on being formal, no matter how many times Varric corrected him. "Messere Dorian, she... she thinks very highly of you."  
He hears the tactfully unspoken words very well. _She'll be waiting for you. The longer you wait, the worse it'll be for both of you._

A sick apprehension dogs his steps as he approaches her closed door, Adam's apple bobbing as he tries to swallow.  
He doesn't quite know what ails him, except the dim fear that she won't need him, that she'll shout him out of the room or be cold and stiff when he tries to embrace her, that...

 _This isn't about you, Tethras,_ Varric tells himself fiercely as he turns the handle and pushes the door open.

Dorian sits like a brooding statue, erect except for her drooping shoulders, her hands folded neatly in her lap. He wonders how long she's sat like that, staring unseeingly into the fireplace, and feels horribly for skulking around downstairs, quaffing cup after cup of her wine.  
He quietly closes the door behind him and approaches her, and belatedly he thinks, _It smells like death in here, too._

"I thought I was angry." Her voice is hoarse with disuse, but she doesn't clear her throat. "Or... sad, or _something._ Aren't I supposed to be?"  
Varric pulls himself up onto the bed beside her and watches the flames dance, his hands folded in his lap. His internal monologue is queerly silent, his mind a blur of feelings that defied even the most detailed of language.

"White lilies," she whispers harshly, and her hands tighten around each other. "I should have known.  
They were right there on the mantle, mocking me, and where was I?"

She isn't cold and stiff when he impulsively reaches for her, but melts into his embrace with a sigh so deep it is almost sweet, and when he opens his mouth to say something, anything, he can only murmur her name, over and over, until they tumble into exhausted, black slumber.

She doesn't cry for days, her face always white and still, like a mask.  
One evening she gives him a sharp, piercing look, and he freezes under its intensity.  
"She didn't dislike you, Varric," she says quietly, and he hugs her before he can see her face crumple.

\--

 _I didn't know Leandra Hawke. Oh, I popped up at the estate every once in a while -- had a drink or two, left my mark, and went on my way -- but mothers are complicated creatures, and I prefer to remain mysterious when it comes to them.  
But I do know she watched terrible, terrible things happen to her family and still managed to get out of bed every day. I do know she brought strong, beautiful children into the world -- even if one of them_ is _a bit of a tit and the other one's a blasted pair of 'em. I do know the survival rate of families with apostates, and I know the Hawkes beat all the odds, and if Leandra wasn't a big part of the reason, then bind my breasts and call me Isobel, because everything I know in life is a lie._

 _The point is... oh, there is no point.  
This is a love story, this whole thing, isn't it? Well, this was a tale about love. From Leandra to Varric to Dorian to dear little Bodahn, too,_ this was a tale about love.

_You're welcome._


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which... Bartrand. [Chapter Rating: Teen]

The rub was, she liked Bartrand from the beginning.

He was coarse. Uncompromising. There was a cunning fire in his eyes that she understood, that she appreciated. He quested for gold and for glory, and in Dorian Hawke's eyes, there was nothing underhanded about that.

And Varric thought to himself, _maybe this nasty feeling of mine is unwarranted._

With the more-than-capable Fereldan around, who could expect the worst?

\---

Varric wanted a showdown. He wanted an open playing field where he and his brother faced off, one on one, for the first and last time. He wanted to sneer and spit and show his elder brother that he _wasn't_ the snot-nosed little dwarfling who cleaned up everyone's messes and didn't speak a word.  
Oh, he'd clean up this time, he would.

But there were shades, and there were _demons,_ and that Maker-awful stench of pure lyrium and rank, nervous sweat, and underneath that there was a nauseating sense of _death._  
Something or someone had died here, and though he knew it wasn't Bartrand himself, it was damn near.

They'd brought no one else -- Varric and Dorian fought their way to the master bedroom alone, until their breath soughed roughly in their throats and their arms ached with the exertion, and all they found was a stammering, glass-eyed husk of a dwarf cowering in his bedchamber.

 _This is not my vengeance,_ Varric thinks uneasily, and Bianca falls heavily to his side.

"The song. The song, I can't hear it," Bartrand wheedles, "Varric, you're good, you've always been good, help me hear it," and Dorian swings her staff upward until the tapered point of it jabs into the vulnerable flesh under his chin, behind the scraggly excuse for a beard.  
There is murder in her eyes, but all she spits out is, " _Worm._ And I had the nerve to think you an equal."

Varric can only think in flashes of phrase -- the fine tremble of Bartrand's calloused hands, the red flecks in his vacant eyes, the reek of his unwashed body and the flick of his tongue over cracked lips. Dimly, he thinks he should intervene, but he thinks he's seen the same searching look in his mother's eyes once-upon-a-time, and he cannot move his mouth to speak.

Bartrand doesn't notice there's a thin trickle of blood dripping into his tunic, from the press of Dorian's staff.  
Absurdly, Varric wants to take a cloth and wipe it away.  
Dorian is still wroth, but she waits for him. Waits for him to speak the words that would damn Bartrand to her justice, waits for him to match her contempt with his own.

And he thinks about stepping into his brother's line of vision until he _can't_ be ignored, considers giving him a piece of his roiling mind, imagines spitting at his feet and turning away with a grim finality that will -- consciously or subconsciously -- make Bartrand realise he's fucked up for the last time.

Instead, he licks his lips and shakes his head, a jerky, disjointed motion.  
"It's... over. Dorian. It's over."

"How could you just let him go?" she fumes, back at the estate, her skin still flushed with pent fury and her hands coiled as if she wished a staff still filled them. "After all we suffered, how could you let him go? He deserved to die!"

" _Why,_ Dorian?" Later, he'd be mildly surprised at the strength of his voice, and maybe she'd been, too. "Why? What purpose would that have served? How would that have brought me any solace? He _is_ my brother, do you understand? The only one I have!"

And maybe Bartrand isn't much of a brother to him anymore, but neither is Carver to Dorian, and the lines around her hard eyes soften, and though he would have weathered her frustration, he is much more grateful for her embrace.

\---

_I don't know what happened to Bartrand Tethras in the end. He probably died not too long after Varric and Dorian confronted him in Hightown, considering how... terribly ominous that idol's influence was.  
Varric could have found out. I don't think he wanted -- or needed -- to know._

_We don't choose family. We don't always love family, and we certainly don't have to. But we cannot deny family, and even when the suffering they cause us outweighs the comfort they bring us, in the end we cannot bear to lose them._

_Carver eventually came 'round, fighting beside Dorian when she needed him most.  
And Varric fought at her other side._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the end, the particulars don't matter. All that matters is staying alive.  
> [ chapter rating: Mature? ]

Because his skills of observation far surpassed his skills in any other area, it was Varric who noticed the flecks of dried blood where they shouldn't have been, who noticed that she was keeping her staff judiciously spotless all of a sudden, who uncovered the healing cuts on the insides of her wrists.

"Merrill has these, too," he murmured to himself, "red, and livid," but Dorian heard, and snatched her arm away.

It was months before she admitted it to him, before she said the dreaded words that would damn her in all eyes, before she admitted to him that she needed him there in the estate with her lest she wander too far into the Fade and not find her way home.

"Varric, if I..." She blew out breath in a gust, thick brows knitted with an intensity that made fear curl in Varric's belly. "If I ever need you to... help me. If my blood isn't enough..."

And Varric took her hands, and kissed the insides of her wrists, and rested his damp forehead on the backs of her hands, but he looked up at her in the end with rueful eyes.  
"Dorian," and she started to scowl and snatch her hands away, but he held fast, "there are some places I cannot go."

\---

The sky is more black than blue, despite it being midday. Varric notes this with an absurd amount of curiosity, his mind wandering skittishly from the horrors of the battlefield as if he has never seen so much blood.

But he hasn't, he thinks, sickly. He _hasn't_ seen this much blood, ever.  
It is all over him, all over his companions. The courtyard is bathed in it. The only thing that drowns out the thick squelch of it is the Knight-Commander's warped voice and the screams of the fallen.

He's lost sight of Dorian. Anders is a blue streak of fury. He thinks Merrill might have fallen, and his heart burns.  
The image of the First Enchanter-turned-abomination is still seared on the surface of his mind. Dorian had taken up his three-headed staff with a glittering fury in her eyes, had spit upon the ruins of his body, and in that moment, Varric felt as though he might have been losing her.

He'd called her name just before she started down the steps, towards where Meredith waited, but she hadn't looked back.  
He felt as though he might be losing her.

He plants his foot on the back of a fallen templar and yanks the crossbow bolt out with both hands. He can't find the others. There are bodies everywhere, his bolts in some of them, but it sickens him further to scrounge amongst them for the ammunition.  
"It's just you and me, Bianca," he mumbles, fitting the bolt in and drawing the lever back just as Meredith shoots into the air in a blaze of eye-jarring red. "Pretty soon, it'll just be me."

"Varric!"

His heart lurches into his throat at the jagged sound of Dorian's voice, and he strains his aching eyes to see her. She clutches the First Enchanter's staff, struggling to rise from the blood-soaked stones.  
Her eyes are just as red as everything else, and Varric despairs.

"Varric! Help me!"

He remembers shaking his head when she asked him to help her the first time. He remembers how he feared, how he distrusted. He remembers all the times he lay awake beside her as she thrashed, caught in the Fade, fighting.  
He remembers the despair in Orsino's eyes. The livid triumph in Meredith's when she saw his staff in Dorian's hand. He remembers -- with an ache that was physical as much as emotional -- Dorian before this, before helplessness and rage and black, black fear led her to the blade, to red eyes and red wrists, to the brink of death every time she sought to protect her own.  
'There are some places I cannot go,' he'd said. How naive he'd been.

_"Varric!"_

He gives his blood to her. And she rises.

\---

_It's not easy, being a blood mage. I mean, I've never been one, of course. But I watch, and I listen, and that's how I learn.  
It's not easy, loving a blood mage, either. You think, 'this is wrong. I can't support this. This is just so wrong', but then she needs you, needs you to stay alive and protect you both, and you can't say no to her. Not then._

_And in that instant, what are you, if not a maleficar as well?_

_The blood is the life, they say. And how many times do people give their lives for their loved ones, and are lauded for their sacrifice? Why must the loved one who gives his blood, his_ life, _for the maleficar be damned instead?_

 _Dorian Hawke, maleficar, killed Meredith in the name of magekind, and picked Merrill and Anders and Varric up off the ground, and they left Kirkwall alive -- battered and bleeding, but_ alive.

_From blood, life._


End file.
